


Here and Gone

by shewho



Series: Here and Gone, Gone, Gone verse [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, I'm Sorry, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Couple, Medical Inaccuracies, Seizures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-10
Updated: 2014-05-10
Packaged: 2018-01-24 04:58:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1592474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(the prequal to "<a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1563686/chapters/3316445">Gone, Gone, Gone</a>")</p>
<p>In summary, how Jehan and Courfeyrac lost their son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here and Gone

                “Daddy?”

                Courfeyrac’s head snapped up when he heard the tremble in his son’s raised voice. “Benny?” he called back.

                All he got in response was a long, low, drawn-out whimper from the direction of his son’s bedroom, followed by a muted _thud_.

                “Benny?” he called again, panic starting to thread through his voice as he stood up from his desk.

                No answer.

                Courfeyrac ran, sprinting out of his home office and up the short flight of stairs to the room that he and Jehan had spent months getting ready eight years ago, arguing over the right colors (sage green and plum) and flooring (the plushest carpet that money could buy) and what to fill it with in anticipation of their son (a baby-sized waterbed crib and hundreds of toys and books). When he pushed open the door, with its hand painted “THIS ROOM BELONGS TO: BENOÎT PROUVAIRE. KEEP OUT!” sign, the sight that met him instantly left him breathless and horrified.

                Benny’s tiny limbs jerked violently, his entire body wracked with spasms, the soft _thumps_ coming from his arms and legs hitting the ground over and over and over again. Courfeyrac fell to his knees and held his son’s head to keep him still as he vibrated as though his body was trying to shake apart. Tears were streaming down his face as he screamed out Jehan’s name, his voice cracking because he needed his husband to hear the desperation in his voice, desperation that he didn’t know how to express in words.

*

                The hospital had been a chaotic experience that Jehan had nothing to compare to, but he was sitting in a pale blue room with a border of dingy jungle animals and Benny was finally swimming towards consciousness, his eyelids fluttering and minute trembles working their way through his fingers. Finally, his big dark eyes opened and he peered about curiously, obviously confused. His eyes landed on Jehan and he licked at his dry lips before speaking. “Papa? What happened…?”

                The poet smiled softly, rubbing a thumb gently along the edge of the tape holding a needle in his son’s small hand. “You had a seizure, _mon petit_.” He reached forward to tuck a loose curl behind the boy’s ear, “How are you feeling?”

                “Owwie,” the little boy moaned softly, shutting his eyes and sliding down in the bed.

                “What? What is it?” Jehan asked urgently.

                “I feel icky.”

                Jehan chuckled, “ _Oui_ , I figured that you might.”

                All the tests came back negative for anything, for everything.

                And so they wrote it off as a freak-accident one-time deal and went home.

*

                Two weeks later, he had another “status” seizure, a term for one that lasted for longer than thirty minutes.

*

                “He’s seizing,” Jehan explained quietly and most likely unnecessarily as he gently slipped his folded coat beneath his son’s head. He understood how disturbing it was to see such a young child twitching on the ground as if he’d been electrocuted, and sometimes forgot that not everyone saw it as often as he did. Small, involuntary whimpers slipped from between Benny’s parted lips and Jehan murmured a litany of nonsense to him, as if he could hear or comprehend him.

                 Combeferre’s thin hand snaking towards his son snapped Jehan from the daze he was in, and he slapped his friend’s wrist away before he’d had time to process his actions. As Combeferre’s eyes widened with what Jehan thought might be horror, he hastened to explain, because no matter what the situation was, Combeferre always responded positively to information. “It’s usually a bad idea to touch someone who’s seizing. Maybe just your hands beside their head, like this,” he indicated with a nod of his own head, “But nothing more.”

                 Combeferre’s hands twitched and his already pale face drained of all its remaining color. “Of course.” He tried to sound professional and unaffected, but his voice trembled slightly. “Forgive me, Jehan, I…it has been a long time since I went through a course that covered treatment of seizures.”  

                Jehan’s smile was tight and certainly the most insincere expression the older man had ever seen cross the poet’s face. “It’s fine.”

*

                Enjolras was focused on Benny, his blue eyes wide and horrified as he watched the boy spasm. The only seizure he had ever seen before was the single, relatively mild one Grantaire had had while detoxing years ago, and while that had terrified him, it was equally terrifying to watch his best friend’s child seizing violently.

                “It doesn’t hurt, you know,” Courfeyrac murmured, glancing up from his spot on Enjolras’ living room carpet to find the blonde man staring. “He can’t feel it.”

                Enjolras choked out a strangled noise, “Courf, there’s no way that he can’t feel those convulsions.”

                “No man, I’m serious. He has no idea what’s going on once one starts. He won’t remember it when he wakes up.” Enjolras still did not appear convinced, so he continued, “It looks way worse than it actually is, Enj.” His focus went back to Benny as his son began to still, panting hard and starting to sob weakly. “Hey, Benny, it’s okay, Daddy’s gotcha. Daddy’s here.” He leaned down to brush a dark curl identical to his own off the boy’s forehead. “You back with me, little man?” He waited a moment before leaning over to grab his phone from where he’d thrown it earlier, swiping across the screen to unlock it.

                “You’re taking him to the hospital, right?”

                “Probably,” Courfeyrac shrugged, phone balanced between his ear and his shoulder. “Hey, Jehan,” he said into his phone. “Benny had a seizure—no, babe, c’mon, breathe with me, one…two…three…that’s it, there you go—but he’s okay now. No, not quite all the way back, but back enough. I’m gonna take him to the hospital. Meet us there whenever, okay? Okay? _Au revoir, mon amour.”_

                Benny groaned softly, clutching at Courfeyrac’s pant leg. “Benny?” he murmured as he set down his phone, “You with me?”

                The child blinked blearily, focusing on Courfeyrac for a moment before his eyelids fluttered shut again, lashes casting pale purple shadows against the curve of his cheek. “ _Où?”_ Benny mumbled. He blinked several times in quick succession.

                Courf leaned down into Benny’s field of vision and asked firmly, “What’s your name, _mon_ _c_ _houchou_ _?”_

                Benny’s mouth opened and closed silently a handful of times before he mumbled, “Benny P’vaire.”

                “ _Oui_ ,” Courfeyrac smiled encouragingly. “Do you know where you are?”

                It was a moment before he replied, “Home.” Which wasn’t exactly correct, but more or less was good enough for Courfeyrac when he’d just watched his son’s brain scramble itself.

                 “You’re doing such a fine job, Benny. Just one more question, _mon petit prince_. What month is it?”

                Benny’s consciousness was fading fast, but he managed to whisper “ _Février_ ” before his eyes slipped closed again and he was asleep.

*

                “Where are you?” Jehan hissed into his cellphone as he paced outside the hospital building, the hand holding his cigarette gesticulating wildly even though Courfeyrac wasn’t there to see it. “I get it, it’s the opening of the Spring Collection for your label in Milan, but this is a goddamn emergency and if your assistant tells me one more time that you told her to tell me to ‘call back at a reasonable hour, your time’, I’m gonna break her in half. I swear to god, Courf. She’s a toothpick. I could do it.” He sighed, raking a hand through his hair. “Please,” he whispered. “Come home. I need you. _We_ need you. Please.”

*

                “Monsieur de Courfeyrac?” The dark-haired man stood, alongside Combeferre, following the doctor forward. “So, your son, he’s still asl—”

                “Hasn’t he woken up by now?” Combeferre asked, one wide hand spanning the width of Courf’s lower back reassuringly.

                “Not just yet; we gave him a pretty strong dose of painkillers and a mild sedative yesterday. He ought to wake up in the next few hours, but he won’t be completely lucid just yet. We’re going to bring him around pretty slowly, try not to push him too hard too fast. He’ll be completely off the sedative in a day or so, maybe two.”

                “Can we see him now, though?”

                The doctor nodded, motioning them through the door behind him. Benny looked so tiny and pale and broken, tucked into his little bed, one of the ones with rails on the sides. Pale purple bruising covered the side of his cheek and one of his arms, and there was a patch of hair shaved off on the same side to accommodate the small line of stitches there. An IV led into his tiny hand, and one of his index fingers was covered by a plastic cap, flashing his vitals up on a monitor beside the bed in multi-colored horror. Jehan was half-asleep in the chair beside him, but looked up, jerking fully awake at their arrival.

                It was terrifying.

                Of all the times he and Jehan had sat opposite one another over Benny’s hospital bed, this was bar none the worst their son had ever looked.

                The doctor left quietly, murmuring that Benny’s nurse’s name was Annabelle if they needed anything, and Combeferre was directly behind him with a quick squeeze of Courf’s shoulder.

                Courfeyrac sat down hard in the chair on Benny’s unmarred side and brushed his fingers through the dark curls on the side of the boy’s head that wasn’t stitched closed. “Oh man, he’s gonna to hate this when he wakes up,” he murmured softly, finally glancing up through his lashes to meet Jehan’s eyes.

                The poet looked haggard, the dark bruises under his eyes looking nearly black under the fluorescent lights. “Well at least he’ll still be alive _to_ hate it.”

                “Look…,” he hesitated. “What happened earlier, I was out of line.”

                Jehan nodded stiffly, “You were. I’m glad that you recognized that. Did Combeferre point it out to you?”

                Irritation spiked through him. “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t _not_ go to the show; that’s my _job_ ,” he snapped. “So just _drop it_.”

                “I’m not telling you to not do your job,” Jehan hissed as he straightened up in his chair, his spine popping menacingly. “I’m simply asking you to come home to be with us. To come home to us, to me, to your son when he’s in the _hospital._ ”

                His eyes instantly went soft, hurt. “That was low, Jehan. Fuck—,” Courfeyrac caught himself before he told his husband to fuck off.

                “I know it’s hard—”

                “No,” he shook his head, “You have no fucking _idea_ what it feels like. Your kid isn’t—”

                “Fuck you,” Jehan interrupted with an uncharacteristic roughness in his voice. “He’s _broken_ and you’re playing the your-kid-my-kid bio-dad card _now_?”

                “He’s not even your _son_ ,” Courfeyrac retorted, instantly wishing he could take the words back as soon as they left his lips.

                Jehan’s face fell before rearranging into a mask of indifference and anger, but not before Courfeyrac caught a glimpse of the hurt he’d put there. “Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way after _eight years_ …the law says he is and if we went to court _to-day_ , guess who’s been acting in the child’s best interest whilst the other was nowhere to be reached by cellphone, email, or carrier pigeon? Oh, yes, that would be Monsieur Prouvaire, thank you very much.” He glared at Courfeyrac, pale eyes boring into dark ones, “God, I hate you sometimes. I love you, but— _God_ —I hate you.”

                They stared at one another in the slowly darkening room, each one biting back the words that he knew would destroy the other in a way that couldn’t be undone, not ever. They knew each other better than anyone else and that knowledge included the exact combination of words and insults to throw in order to win a fight by completely decimating the other.

                “Don’t say I’m a bad father,” Courfeyrac finally said instead of apologizing. “I’m doing the best I can.”

                “Are you?”Jehan snapped. “Really?”

                They didn’t talk after that. They sat and waited for their son to return to them.

*

                Not for the first time, Jehan wanted to scream. He hadn’t heard Benny’s laugh for six months. He hadn’t heard his voice at all, just the constant crying. It was like his son wasn’t even human some days. On the bad days, he just lay in their laps, seizing and sobbing.

                He sighed, twisting his fingers through the fringe of Benny’s floor rug, lounging in his bedroom on one of the two days that week that the doctors had physically barred them from the hospital. “All those days,” he murmured, staring up at the ceiling. “As those days that we could’ve been doing something, but we didn’t really have the time.” His hair swished softly around his as he rolled onto his stomach and looked up at Courfeyrac, the same familiar broken look gracing his face. “We should’ve made time, Courf.”

                The pang of sadness that darted across Jehan’s face was so old and so familiar that it barely twinged. Courf sighed and raked a hand through his husband’s long hair, cupping his cheek, and trying to keep his own face open and sympathetic. “I know, darling. I know.”

                In less than four months, the seizures went from being twice a week to twice a day to twice an hour. Benny could barely speak sometimes, couldn’t walk half the time, had to have a feeding tube inserted because he couldn’t eat, either. The second week of June, Courfeyrac lost count of the seizures.

                Jehan didn’t.

                Benny had over three hundred seizures that week, so many that his doctors suggested that they put him in a medically induced coma to give his brain and body a rest, at least for a while. They had done all they could to curtail the apparently limitless, violent seizures that hit their son ten, twenty, sometimes up to fifty or more times a day. They were trapped behind a glass wall of ignorance, watching their son as he was robbed of his rudimentary physical utilities and sent into convulsions that caused head injuries and broken teeth. They’d tried more than one extreme diet, at least two dozen medications, more than a few with possible harmful side effects.

                Yet—still—they were losing him.

*

                Benny’s stretcher was rolled into the room as Courfeyrac and Jehan hovered outside. One nurse came out of the room after a few moments and touched the dark-haired man’s shoulder softly. “I hope you’re in and out of here quickly, Monsieur.”

                All three heard the words she left unsaid.

_I hope this little one survives._

                “Me too,” he whispered, tightening his hands into fists, nearly crushing Jehan’s fingers between his own.

                Sticky pads were placed on their son’s thin chest and a cuff was placed around the arm not entangled by the IV. A pair of young doctors—too young, _too young_ , Combeferre and Joly were never that young, _never_ —began CPR on him, on their s _on_. There were hurried orders for drugs and actions, but it might as well have been in Japanese for all that the men waiting just outside the doorway understood it.

                The tall nurse stopped squeezing the bag that had been forcing air into Benny’s lungs and stood back. The doctors performing CPR did the same, and a third reached in and pressed paddles to the small boy’s chest.

                To jolt his heart back into working.

                Because _his heart had stopped._

                It didn’t work— _it didn’t work_ —and all three resumed their places for a moment before shocking him again, his whole body spasming like he was having a seizure, except for once he wasn’t.


End file.
